Booting Boris was a catastrophic error

To call it a shambles is an insult to the many perfectly respectable shambles that take place each day up and down this fine land. Yesterday’s performance across Westminster and Whitehall by the Conservative and Unionist party will surely be remembered for many years as the textbook example of the nadir to which a dysfunctional, divided and woefully-led governing party can plummet.

The preposterous levels of self-belief exhibited by the Prime Minister across the despatch box made for a disquieting opening act, to be followed by the loss of yet another occupant of a great office of state and then, with grim inevitability, utterly farcical scenes in the voting lobbies and the whips office. We can now say definitively that the defenestration of Boris Johnson by Conservative MPs was a mistake, despite his own frequent association with shambolic episodes. What has followed is far, far worse than anything over which the blond bombshell presided.

Johnson’s former Downing Street adviser on energy policy, Jennifer Powers, yesterday revealed that they had worked all summer – along with hundreds of civil servants – on an emergency package of support for consumers that would have included incentives to use less power and energy efficiency measures. Yet under the terms of his final weeks in Downing Street, Johnson was not permitted to implement any major policy. And when Truss and Kwarteng arrived in town, the plan was simply dumped in favour of an exorbitantly expensive, indiscriminate, two-year scheme that was surely the biggest factor behind financial markets taking fright. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, as the old saying goes.

Johnson once likened his own prospects of reaching No. 10 to being opportunistically prepared to pick up the ball and run with it should it come free at the back of the scrum. But the ball is not dropping neatly out of the scrum this time around. Instead, it is trapped in a rolling maul of cabinet chaos, with members getting trampled underfoot, then seeking to bind in again as it veers off in random directions. Grant Shapps is the latest figure to put his gum shield back in and have another go.

The departure of Suella Braverman confirms what most of us had already worked out: Truss intends to rip up the 2019 manifesto commitment – sadly neglected by Johnson too – to bring overall migrant numbers down, viewing it as a relic of the hated ‘anti-growth coalition’ that pre-dated her regime. In the end, the Tories’ constant ideological shape-shifting can be seen to have taken an enormous toll. From Cameroon progressive centrism through the tug-of-war Brexit years, into the paternalistic Red Wallism of Boris and now the teenage libertarianism of the bumptious Violet Elizabeth Truss, who may scream and scream until she is sick. It is little wonder that so many of their MPs are these days only truly loyal to themselves.

The most worrying aspect of all was Truss’s inexplicably confident demeanour at PMQs, telling the chamber what she is and what she isn’t. There were absurd echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s valedictory performance after 11 tumultuous, world-shaping, years at the helm. ‘I’m enjoying this,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m a fighter, not a quitter,’ barked Liz. We’ll be the judges of that, dear.

An every-man-for-himself ethos has taken hold amid the stampede for the lifeboats. Conservative MPs now compete for media attention in a bid to distance themselves from the disgrace. But in saying memorable things they merely add to the atmosphere of general insurrection. People who were around at the time say the lengths to which the 1974 to 1979 Wilson-Callaghan administration went just to keep the show on the road would take some beating. But it didn’t have a majority for much of the period and just holding together must have taken an esprit de corps far removed from anything this Tory administration, with its notional majority of around 70, can manage.

One weeps for the deep-thinkers – the Kemi Badenochs and Danny Krugers – with their genuine commitment to finding a way to rebuild a good society from the ruins brought about by the globalist creed of the past two decades. We have reached the point where, at the general election which is surely coming soon, it is likely to be habitual Conservative voters who most relish seeing the carnage unfold.